1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to interactive gaming applications. More particularly, the present invention relates to methods for feature unlocking in interactive gaming applications.
2. Background Art
When distributing products such as videogames through retail channels, retailers may often request retailer-specific exclusive content and features to attract consumers. For example, retailers may desire a special customized version, such as a special edition or limited edition package containing exclusive items, characters, downloads, maps, bonus items, or other features specific for the retailer. Retailers can cultivate increased retail store and website traffic by promoting their special or limited edition products through advertising, circular inserts, social networking, and other promotional and marketing channels.
An extension to this approach is for retailers to offer secondary products and services that unlock additional content for the retailer specific videogame product. For example, the purchase of Blu-ray or DVD discs, movie tickets, grocery items, hygiene items, game accessories, premium memberships, or other products and services from the retailer may provide users with ancillary redemption codes for unlocking additional exclusive content. The ancillary redemption codes may comprise, for example, alphanumeric strings to be entered by users or barcodes to be scanned by camera.
Unfortunately, requiring separate packaging and program code for each specific retailer incurs significant additional development effort to implement minor differences between retailer versions. While using a single unified version would avoid this disadvantage, a single unified version would render it difficult to confirm the specific retailer where a consumer may have purchased a game product. As a result, a single unified version would have to accept the redemption codes for all retailers, and consumers could therefore purchase only the secondary products from a particular retailer and redeem the ancillary redemption codes while avoiding the purchase of the primary product, or the videogame, at the same retailer. This is an undesirable situation for retailers seeking to promote and sell both primary and secondary products to consumers.
Accordingly, there is a need to overcome the drawbacks and deficiencies in the art by providing an efficient and cost effective method of providing retailer exclusive features and content while preserving incentives for purchasing both primary and secondary products at a single retailer.